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Monday, June 18, 2012

Black Sack for the New Standard

Black Sack is Back

Magic: The Gathering has enjoyed the longevity it has for a
plethora of reasons. People like
collecting, the game has improved from its roots, it’s highly customizable,
it’s competitive, it’s random…all of these are true. However, one of the driving forces for
veterans of Magic and trading card games in general is the nostalgic factor built in. I don’t know how many times I’ve
been playing casual/Commander/Standard and I’ve heard myself or my opponent(s)
say, “man, I remember when that card was so awesome/expensive/overpowered!”

Some still are.

A lot of people keep old decks put together for the sake of
nostalgia (or because the cards in it don’t belong anywhere else), or they’ll
refuse to trade an old card for its sentimental value. I know that’s true for me.

Some people, including Wizards themselves, want to reignite
an old archetype. We even idealize our
current archetypes with names of long past but eternally recognizable names: Naya
Pod, Grixis Control, Zoo, BorosAggro
(though what other kind of Boros is there?)
Huntmaster of the Fells has nothing to do with Naya save sharing its
colors, nor does Zoo use any of the same creatures. These standbys in archetype naming reflect
something important; we like patterns, and we like identifying with times past.

One of those old standards has gone under the radar for a
while though, and I want to look at it here.

Mono.

Black.

Control.

MBC, to which it’s often affectionately referred, was a
classic strategy of concentrated hatred intermingled with a couple dozen Swamps
and a Cabal Coffers. Kill spells,
discard, efficient and powerful creatures all helped this evergreen deck stay
strong and relevant.

Is that thing a face?

A good friend of mine from college played a very effective
and cost-friendly Legacy MBC deck.
Smothers, Diabolic Edicts, Organ Grinder, Faceless Butcher, each cast
with appropriate sound effects, slayed my most carefully tailored decks. They were consistent and au courant for a
long time. The world of Standard hasn’t
seen a true MBC deck in a long time, though.
Sure, core black decks have existed; Vampires was a very real deck in ALA/ZEN/M10 days, and (mostly) black Zombies does
fine in Standard nowadays, but most have a dash of another color, usually red
or blue. In recent years, mono-black has
gotten some targeted love from Wizards, though often without making a splash in
the Standard world.

Poor Tormented Insect.

Even this guy, as
sick as he is, doesn’t see a ton of play.

Behold blessed sideboard fodder

So what gives?
Where’s the “control” in our mono-black?

With Avacyn Restored coming out, several new beauties have
lent themselves to that deck. One such
card soared under a lot of people’s radar, starting on Prerelease day. This fellow can kill a player dead in their
tracks, stop a beating aggro or control heart and undo turns and turns of
work. Yet he can’t even trade with an
Eager Cadet. He is…

Blood is thicker than watercolor.

I’ve heard some positive chatter about this fellow and I
think it’s all well-deserved. Although
very similar to Falkenrath Noble, its cheaper price tag makes all the difference. You can start getting value out of him much
sooner. So, how do we make this deck
effective? What other pieces does it
need? We need stuff to die…a lot of
stuff, both mine and yours, so we need things that like to die. Plenty of Undying stuff…maybe a Zombie
subtheme? Card advantage is important,
if I’m going to be killing everything. I
need a way to destroy stuff on demand.

Alright, let’s take a look at a preliminary list.

4 Blood Artist

4 Gravecrawler

3 Butcher Ghoul

4 Geralf’s Messenger

4 Devouring Swarm

3 Treacherous Pit-Dweller

3 Liliana of the Veil

4 Victim of Night

4 Tragic Slip

3 Altar’s Reap

3 Killing Wave

21 Swamp

SB

4 Appetite for Brains

4 Geth’s Verdict

3 Essence Harvest

2 Sever the Bloodline

2 Black Sun’s Zenith

Creatures

Gravecrawler

"To terrorize y'all's neighborhood!"

Cheap, efficient and recurring, this is exactly the one-drop
this deck needs. Recur after combat,
after a board sweep, or as much as possible with a sacrifice outlet with Blood
Artist. He’s tough to deal with on turn
one, with just one real answer (Pillar of Flame). With 10 other Zombies, 8 of which resist
conventional removal, it shouldn’t be a problem to shamble this guy back from
the graveyard.

Butcher Ghoul

Well...yeah, there he is.

Boy, this doesn’t look great, right? Strictly worse then Young Wolf in just about
every way? What I like about it is it’s
a creature you can sack twice, it’s a Zombie, and he blocks and attacks just as
well as a Young Wolf, a strong card in its own right. There are probably better choices than this
inefficient creature, but synergetically, I think he’s a hit.

Geralf’s Messenger

It keeps going and going and going and going and...

This mono-black dream is also incredibly complementary. A three-life hit with a single Blood Artist
out really takes the cake here. This
deck is all about life swing, and he is efficient on the offense and his
defensive downside is mitigated by the fact this deck keeps your opponent’s
board creature-free.

Devouring Swarm

Gnat again!

A blatant sacrifice engine, it was in competition for
Bloodflow Connoisseur. Eventually, I
chose Devouring Swarm for one main reason: evasion. If your opponents resolves a troublesome
ground creature (Grave Titan, Huntmaster of the Fells), this creature soars
right by. It’s a fine finisher, and it
can protect itself a little bit. I also
figured that whatever removal would kill a Devouring Swarm would also kill a
Bloodflow Connoisseur, so there wasn’t much advantage. If Devouring Swarm was a 1/1, I’d pick the
Connoisseur, but it’s a little stronger creature all by itself, which is
important after a board sweep or on the back pedal. A 1/1 for 3 is a lot worse than a 2/1 flyer
for 3.

This guy may be the best or the worst card in the deck. I honestly can’t be sure yet. I’m not the first person to try and maximize
the value of one in a long line of major-drawback, major-profit creatures. Sure, he’s a monster on Turn 2, but there are
two other reasons I feel comfortable playing him.
First of all, I have plenty of sacrifice outlets at instant speed to
deal with a treacherous demon that hops the fence before or after the sacrifice. You
can sack it before its undying trigger resolves. Liliana’s -1 ability, Victim
(if you have to), and it gets better against non-standard removal, like
Terminus, Fiend Hunter, O-Ring, bounce (because it’s so cheap), and Sever the
Bloodline. These kinds of removal are
getting more and more common, so Treacherous Pit-Dweller starts to gain more
value. Besides, if they don’t have one
of these answers...

Spells

Liliana of the Veil

She's pretty imbalanced, isn't she?

Oh, Liliana. She’s
gotten sleeved and unsleeved a lot of times since her release last
September. Solar Flare, Reanimator, and
now, MBC. I believe it’s her true home,
as all of her abilities are, well, very black.
In this deck, you can toss your Gravecrawler and reanimate him, or some
of the many lands you’ll end up drawing (this whole deck is three CMC and lower.) Her sacrifice ability will help keep your
opponents’ board clear for Gravecrawlers, Pit-Dwellers and Messengers. Most of the time, I feel she honestly shouldn’t
be a third turn play. I think, however,
she’ll most often be a revolving-door kind of planeswalker. Cast, spin down, spin down, cast another,
spin down again. I think she’ll be very
useful in this deck. She just needs to
be cheaper to buy…

Victim of Night

Fatality!

I chose this simply because it was the best targeted kill
spell for BB. There are a couple cards
this won’t hit, but it’ll hit the big ones.
Titans, Sphinxes, Humans…Anything it doesn’t kill your sacrificing will
kill. It’s possible that Go for the
Throat is better, but I wanted to try this just because I don’t think it gets
enough love. Besides, GftT is rotating
out in three months.

Altar’s Reap

Just sack him.

An invaluable card in this deck both for its card advantage,
but its ability to sacrifice at instant speed, preventing an irritating Pillar
of Flame from zapping your Gravecrawler or Geralf’s Messenger into
oblivion. Use it in response to the
Pit-Dweller’s undying ability for super value.
Altar’s Reap should be a welcome card in any hand, and it’s a great
reason to keep two mana open. Also, on a
niche note, the sacrifice is a cost, so the creature still dies even if the
spell is countered.

Tragic Slip

I accidentally your creature.

Tragic Slip is a great, yet conditional, kill spell. On one hand, it can be “Destroy target
creature” with Morbid active, or it can be “Destroy target unflipped Delver”
without. Either way, with this deck’s
proclivity to morbidity, this felt like the right card. It deals with Delvers and Titans alike, all
for one mana.

Killing Wave

Liliana sure is ex-y in this picture.

Meant to be a powerful finisher, it is a card that your
opponent will have trouble interacting with.
Sure, it can be countered, but against an even mildly aggressive deck,
this card will break over them like…a wave.
C’mon now. Even if you’re the
only one with creatures, if you have a Blood Artist or any of your undying
creatures, you’ll be just fine as this resolves.

What I like most about Killing Wave is what I like about all
“opponent’s choice” cards like this.
They can pay a cost to prevent something from happening. Only in some circumstances will the choice be
favorable, however. I’ve noticed people
not even thinking about paying life to prevent something happening. Vexing Devil is a great example. I will just about always let it resolve if I
would have less than 10 life from forcing it to be sacrificed.
If your deck is even remotely successful, this decision will be too
hard for them. It can be either a very
effective Blaze or a one-sided Wrath of God.
If they’re against the ropes, it is a literal game-winner; they can’t
pay the life OR sacrifice their creatures – either leaves them on the losing
end of the table. Although pros often
speak against this kind of card, when both
choices are synergetic in your deck, why wouldn’t you play it?

Regarding the land, I honestly wanted all Swamps for
consistency. I could see playing some
non-basics, like Ghost Quarter, Haunted Fengraf and Cavern of Souls, but I just honestly don’t want
the risk of NOT casting my Messenger on Turn 3.
The color demands of this deck are so heavy that a Swamp is almost
always going to be better.

The sideboard is a real crapshoot. I have no idea what this deck needs out of
the sideboard, and I think it will be highly variable based on the metagame
(when isn’t that the case?)

I proxied the deck and drytested it against my own decks (in
this case, a mono-green Dungrove Elder/Undying Deck, a mono-white humans deck
and my blue-red MiRUcle™ deck.) It did
worst against the white deck (where I thought it would do the best) and best
against MiRUcle and mono-green.

The deck does have some glaring weaknesses which only
further playtesting will determine, but I see a problem with several cards;
Terminus, for one, other undying creatures, RDW specifically Pillar of
Flame. However, I think this deck would
just eat Delver Decks, most aggro
decks and a large portion of control decks and blink decks. More than that, though, I think the deck has
trouble clutching the win. A surprising
star of the deck was Treacherous Pit-Dweller.
It wasn’t a huge problem for it to change hands, as I could either kill
it or would sacrifice it in response to the undying trigger. On the other hand, Gravecrawler and Geralf’s
Messenger being unable to block was a serious problem; I needed ways to more
effectively protect Liliana. Butcher
Ghoul played well, but in general, I found I’d either not have enough kill
spells or I would not have enough win conditions. I had a lot of empty-boarded “land-go”
turns.

This paragraph, written two weeks after this original article, is here to inform you that, despite a well-intentioned effort, this deck couldn't get there. Perhaps it's back to drawing board with it. A version of this has been floating around, ironically; a B/R Zombie pod deck. It combines a better sack engine (Falkenrath Aristocrat) with more creature choice and just a smoother play. It uses the same muscles. I took it apart last week. It's a learning experience that everyone needs to have as they play Magic at ANY point they play Magic. Never be afraid to brew!

I still feel like there is something here, and I really want
to keep it mono-black. However, it needs
a lot of work and perhaps a clearer vision.
I don’t want to invest heavily until I’m surer, so for now, it might be
back to the drawing board. Is there
something in the list you found particularly weak? If so, what do you think it needs
instead? I’d really like to make this
work. Let me know in the comments. Thanks again for visiting, and don’t forget
to untap!